The importance of maintaining good physical fitness and preventing wasting of the limb muscles is well known. In particular, the limb muscles of physically challenged persons who are physically immobile or incapacitated from infirmity and are bedridden or wheelchair bound are prone to wasting and atrophy for lack of sufficient exercise. Physically challenged persons can also include persons who are physically inactive due to sedentary lifestyles or working conditions, elderly persons having limited mobility, and persons living in confined quarters, such as cells, marine crafts, or space crafts, where limited physical mobility can result in loss of limb muscle strength.
There is an increasing public awareness of the need for physical fitness and the importance of regular exercise for enhancing health and prolonging life. This is evidenced by the increasing availability of health centers, exercise devices, and health awareness publications.
Mechanical exercise devices generally known in the prior art consist of complex apparatus, such as treadmills, bicycles, rowing machines, weight lifting machines, and the like, that require the user to be sufficiently mobile and able to exert the effort required for using the apparatus. Such exercise apparatus and devices are also costly and require considerable spatial area for both usage and storage.
Numerous non-mechanical passive exercise devices are also known in the prior art, such as barbells, ankle weights, and exercise bands, but most of these are not suitable for use by the feeble elderly, infirm or invalid person. For example, barbells require that the user have good hand gripping acumen and sufficient hand grasping strength, which elderly, infirm, and invalid persons usually lack. Ankle weights likewise require that the user have sufficient bodily flexibility and hand dexterity to manipulate the weights for attachment and detachment, which the elderly, infirm, and invalid, often lack. Some exercise bands are frequently anchored to some stationary object, such as a doorknob, furniture (i.e., a chair leg), or a fixed structure, such as a wall, to provide sufficient lateral resistance, but these devices also typically require that the user be sufficiently agile and mobile to exert the considerable force required, and would not be suitable for use by the bedridden.
Some prior art elastic or flexible exercise apparatus and devices are known that can be held with both hands for pulling, but these devices require considerable hand gripping strength or bodily contortion or both. Other prior art devices require that the user exert force simultaneously using both the hands and feet in order to provide sufficient resistance. In some cases, the exercise apparatus induces undesirable traction or force on the spine, either intentionally or indirectly.
There is an ongoing need, therefore, for an economical, compact, limb-muscle exercise apparatus suitable for use by physically challenged persons, and an exercise system that can be easily custom designed by either the user, or caregiver, to both linearly fit the physique and accommodate the variable limb-muscle exercise needs of the user. The modular, resistive exercise system and apparatus of this invention answers this need.